Acoustic field and convection pattern within liquid material during ultrasonic processing

When ultrasound propagates in a liquid alloy, nonlinear effect takes place such as cavitation effect and acoustic streaming, which accelerates the solute and thermal transportation during alloy solidification, and consequently, improves the solidification microstructures and mechanical properties of the metallic alloy. Therefore, it is significant to investigate the ultrasound propagation characteristics in liquid. Here, by choosing water as a model transparent material, the acoustic fields and flow fields induced by 20 and 490 kHz ultrasounds are investigated by numerical simulation, and the effects of frequency and ultrasonic horn radius are studied. Firstly, the simulation results demonstrate that the sound pressure under 20 kHz ultrasound decreases obviously along the ultrasonic propagation direction, and the maximum of sound pressure value is equal to the initial pressure. In this case, the cavitation effect only occurs in the region close to the ultrasonic horn. By contrast, when the ultrasonic frequency increases to 490 kHz, the sound pressure is higher than that of 20 kHz ultrasound, and displays periodical vibration characteristic along the wave propagation direction. The cavitation volume correspondingly expands to a large extent with a regular striped distribution. It can also be found that increasing the ultrasonic horn radius under 20 and 490 kHz ultrasounds can effectively promote the sound pressure level in water, and hence leads to the remarkable enlargement of cavitation volume. Secondly, the calculated results of flow field indicate that the streamlines in water are similar under the two ultrasounds with different frequencies. A jet produced by the center of horn spreads down and divergences to both sides after reaching the bottom. For both frequencies as the horn radius increases, the radius of jet increases and the average velocity in water first increases and then decreases, whose maximum value appears when the horn radius is 40 mm. Meanwhile, the average velocity under 20 kHz ultrasound is larger than that under 490 kHz ultrasound for each horn radius. Finally, particle image velocimetry method is employed to measure the velocity field in water. Both the positions of eddy and the velocity distribution are the same as the simulation results, which verifies the reliability of the present theoretical calculation model. The scenario in this work is analogous to the acoustic field and the flow field in liquid alloy, which is beneficial for the design of parameter optimization during ultrasonic processing in alloy solidification.